The Gates: An Apocalyptic Novel (8 page)

“Don’t they?”

“Yes, they do, but if they’re demons then the gate
that opened was…”

David finished her thought. “A gate to Hell.”

Mina nodded. “That would make things a whole lot
worse than we even thought.”

“We’re not being invaded by Hell, you silly girl.
I won’t even consider it. Heaven-Hell, it’s all a load of codswallop.”

“Well, wallop me a cod,” said Mina. “Because those
monsters outside are demons.”

David huffed. “Aren’t you a Hindu?”

“What? Because I’m one of the brown folk? There’re
as many Christians in India as Hindus, but that’s beside the point. Up until
today, I was an atheist, same as you. Yet here you are, talking about demons.”

David folded his arms across his chest. “Fair
enough. You may still consider me still an atheist though.”

“Even after everything you’ve seen?”

“Those monsters could have been anything. Escaped
lab specimens for all we know.”

“What about the…” Mina trailed off.

“What about the
what?
”

She knew David wouldn’t believe her, but she was
burning to talk about it. “I saw something else,” she said. “There was a giant.
It looked like a man with wings. It looked, I suppose, maybe, a little, you
know, like… an angel.”

David bellowed with laughter, then flinched and
covered his mouth. “Sorry,” he said in a whisper. “But you must be mad.”

“Come on, David. You just don’t want to admit the
truth.”

“The truth has a way of evolving, Mina. I’ll wait
until we have all the facts before drawing conclusions. Now, let’s think about
getting out of here.”

“Go back outside? It’s not safe.”

“No, perhaps not, but we can’t sit around here
forever. You think those chumps from the
Chronicle
are holed up
somewhere cowering?”

“No,” said Mina. “They’re probably dead.”

David huffed. “It’s gone quiet. Let’s just take a
look.”

Mina closed her eyes and had to summon courage to
even get up off the floor. When she eventually managed it, David had
disappeared into the front of the shop and lurked behind the barricade. She
hurried over to join him and dared to take a peek out of the window. The demons
had gone. In their place was a carpet of bodies. Hundreds, maybe a thousand people
dead. A fire had started at the end of the road.

It was Hell on Earth.

“We have to get out of here,” said Mina, completely
changing her mind about staying. “No one is coming to save us.”

David glanced up from over the barricade and saw all
the bodies. “I agree. Somebody has to tell these people’s stories.”

“You can’t tell a story until it’s finished,” said
Mina, “and this one hasn’t even got started yet.”

“I fear you might be right.” David took off his
jacket and placed it on the counter. He rolled up his sleeves and started taking
down the barricade.

Tony lay on his back
gasping. He reached an arm around beneath his back and prodded at himself until
he felt the most pain. The most tender area was just below his right shoulder
blade, and when he brought his fingers back, they were bloody. He’d been hit.
First time in fifteen years. Hadn’t even seen it coming. Because he’d been
distracted.

No, not distracted—
mesmerised
.

That strange black stone. Glowing.

Rough hands grabbed Tony’s webbing and started
dragging him. Suddenly, he was sliding along the desert on his back. The person
dragging him was out of sight, but in front of him, he saw the ISN soldiers
advancing. They’d removed the handbrakes from their vehicles and were using
them as rolling cover. A few of their number lay dead, but there was at least a
dozen still engaging.

The ambush had failed.

Goddamn you, Ellis.

Tony’s rescuer released his webbing and let him
drop against the dirt behind the hill. Lieutenant Ellis appeared before him
looking like a ghost with his pale and sullen face. “Anthony? You’ve been hit.”

“You don’t fuckin’ say?”

Ellis frowned. “Not too badly, I see. Harris, help
the Staff Sergeant up.”

Tony grasped the meaty hand offered to him and
made it up into a crouching position. The pain in his shoulder was bad, but he
battled through it. “Sit-rep?”

“We’ve lost six men, but we’re holding steady,”
Ellis informed him.

Tony groaned. Six young men dead. What a waste. He
turned to Private Harris. “Why are you here? You were heading for the fence
with Corporal Blake.”

“Blake’s dead. I saw you were down too, so I
abandoned the plan and got you back into cover. You’re lucky the bullet only winged
you, Staffie.”

The pain in Tony’s shoulder didn’t make him feel
so lucky, but he patted the private on one of his massive arms and thanked him.
“You saved my life, lad, but that means we’re still pinned down without
options.”

Ellis clutched his rifle against his chest. “There
must be something we can do?”

Tony couldn’t think of anything besides a full
retreat, but then his mind turned to something else. “The stone… Harris, did
you see a strange black stone when you rescued me?”

The young private nodded. “Yeah, the thing was
glowing. I almost took a bullet looking at it, so I had to get out of there.”

“I suppose it’s not important right now,” Tony
admitted. “We need to get our arses out of here.”

The ISN soldiers were right at the base of the
hill now—Tony could hear them. He popped his head above cover and saw them
pushing closer. He also spotted that strange black stone. The odd glowing had distracted
the ISN as well, and with a little luck it might just buy Tony and the others a
chance to escape, but when he saw the rear doors of their van open, he feared
the worse.

Two ISN soldiers appeared carrying an AGS-17—an
automatic grenade launcher. Tony had seen the weapon only in training videos,
but he knew it could spit thirty high-explosive frag grenades in about ten
seconds. It would obliterate the hill and any men taking cover behind it.

“We need to get our arses out of here now!” Tony
shouted. “Move!”

“They’ll mow us down,” Ellis argued.

“They’re about to blow us up.”

Ellis understood and grabbed his radio, but before
he made a call, something halted the fighting.

A blinding flash of light.

A skull-piercing whine.

Tony cupped his ears, lifted his head from cover
and saw what was happening. For a moment, he thought a grenade had exploded,
but as his eyesight recovered, he saw that the enemy were stumbling around in
confusion.

A glowing archway had risen twenty feet high above
the black stone, and it now shimmered in the air like a cloud of vapour. It
looked like some kind of gate.

Something came through. It materialised from the
floating puddle and hit the desert as solid form. Whatever it was was barely
human, hunched over like an old crone—more ape-like than person. It was naked
and entirely bald, with two curled talons the length of chef’s knives hanging
from each arm.

Tony rose to his feet. “What the f-”

The ugly creature leapt into the air and came down
on top of one of the ISN soldiers. It snatched away the soldier’s AK-47 and
sliced through his neck with one of its razor-sharp talons. The cut was so deep
that the victim’s head fell back on his shoulders, and blood spurted out of the
exposed neck stump like a fountain.

It thundered and rained with bullets.

The ISN opened fire first, a dozen soviet assault rifles
chattering all at once, but the British soldiers were quick to add fire from
their more modern combat rifles. The snarling creature reeled backwards. Chunks
of flesh and dark red blood filled the air around it.

It hit the ground as dead as anything could be.

Silence fell upon the patch of Iraqi desert. Two
opposing groups of men stood on opposite sides of a hill having just dispatched
a mutual enemy. What had just happened confused everybody enough that the
fighting ceased. Yet nobody dared break cover. Nobody dared lower their weapons.

The centre of the archway shimmered.

Another creature leapt out.

This time the soldiers were ready for it, and the
creature was dead before its clawed feet settled on the ground. The ISN looked
at its corpse, and then at one another. Fear and confusion adorned their faces.
Tony had never seen Islamic extremists show fear of anything, but these men
were shitting their knickers. To give them their due, not one of them tried to
flee.

A dozen more creatures came through the gate.

Tony moved his finger back to his trigger but didn’t
fire. He found himself staring. They were honest-to-God monsters: clawed feet,
taloned hands, and vile, naked bodies—some of them even sported obscene,
dangling tackle between their legs, while others had nothing. One of them
spotted the British soldiers behind the hill and raced in their direction.

Tony lopped its leg off with a burst of rifle
fire, then re-aimed and blew its head to smithereens. The things were fast. The
creature had been leaping and bounding towards Tony like an angry gorilla, and if
he had missed his shot, it would’ve been right on top of him. Within seconds, a
handful of the ISN had been taken down in a merciless attack. The creatures
were so fast it was impossible to aim at them quick enough to keep them back.
They surged forward in a tide of deadly claws and teeth.

The Syrian rebels screamed as they began to fall.

Pushing through the border fence and encircling
the base of the hill had brought death to the ISN soldiers. Their vehicles had
been sitting just yards from the black stone when the gate had opened. The
monsters had leapt out right on top of them.

“We need to help them,” said Ellis.

Tony shot him a glance. “What?”

“They’re being ripped apart by those monsters. We
need to help them.”

“We need to get our arses out of here. They can go
fuck themselves. We’ve lost men.”

“Yes, we have, but we will rescue the ISN soldiers
anyway. We are better men, Staff Sergeant. We are British soldiers.”

Tony shook his head and cursed so loudly that the men
heard it over the gunfire. “Fine, but the only chance we have is to head across
the border into Syria. If we try to move off this hill back towards our
vehicles, those things will head us off.”

“Fine.” Ellis got on his radio. “All men. On my command,
we will abandon this hill and head for the breach in the fence. We are moving
east into Syria until we can find a place to regroup. During our retreat, we
will endeavour to assist the ISN forces below. They are assaulted by a common
enemy and it is ignoble to use them as a screen for our escape. Over.”

Tony watched the men groan at the mention of
helping the ISN, but he knew they would do as commanded. The way things were
going, it might not even be an issue. There were hardly any ISN soldiers left
to save. The creatures had made it amongst the vehicles and were rapidly
slicing the terrified extremists to pieces. One creature spotted Tony peering
over the hill at them, but he shot it in the face before it had a chance to
warn its brothers.

“We need to move before they come for us.”

Ellis barked into his radio. “Men, on my word. Hold…
hold…
move
!”

What was left of the British firing line crested
the top of the hill and descended towards the border at a staggered sprint.
They were met with no armed resistance, for the ISN were overwhelmed by the
creatures. If there was any chance to aid them, it would have to be now.

Tony made a beeline for the bullet-battered ISN
vehicles. One of the ISN soldiers saw his approach and took it as a threat, but
before he had a chance to point his rifle, Tony shot him in the chest. He was
there to help, but they were still enemy combatants, and if they pointed a gun
at him they were going down. The flaring agony in his right shoulder made him
firm about that.

Tony made it amongst the remaining ISN and shouted
to get their attention. They glanced at him suspiciously, but he waved a hand
of peace before any of them tried to shoot him. Eventually, they realised that
the British soldiers were lining up behind them and adding their fire to the
fight against the creatures. Together, the two groups of men were able to take
out a dozen of the beasts in a single, quick, combined volley, and they were
soon backing away towards the border fence.

Tony counted only three surviving ISN soldiers and
a mere seven British soldiers—including him and Ellis. More than half the men
on both sides were dead.

And the enemy were still coming.

The remaining men wove between the vehicles and
broke into open ground where they all picked up speed towards the fence. Tony
didn’t want the ISN at his back, so he fell back and brought up the rear. In
doing so, he left himself vulnerable to attack from the creatures. Glancing back,
he spotted an army taking shape.

He spotted something else.

The ISN’s van lay just ahead and lying in the dirt
right beside its rear tyre, was the AGS-17 grenade launcher. Tony licked his
lips and tasted grit. If he didn’t do something, the creatures would chase them
right into Syria. He had to buy them all a head start. It was a sergeant’s job
to look after his men.

Lieutenant Ellis spotted Tony as he ran in the
wrong direction. “Anthony, what the blazes are you doing?”

“Not letting a big fuckin’ gun go to waste,” he
shouted back.

He was just about to reach the fallen grenade
launcher, when a creature leapt out in front of Tony from between two banged up
Toyotas. He raised his rifle and placed a round right through its left eye, but
by that time it had launched itself into the air. Its dead carcass came down
right on top of him, and his injured shoulder raged with agony as he fell
sprawling onto his back. It was all he could do just to kick the dead monster
off of him and clamber away through the dirt.

More of the creatures raced towards him.

The other men continued their retreat towards the
border.

He was alone.

The AGS-17 was two feet away. He scrambled on his
belly and grabbed it. The heavy steel in his hands reignited his confidence,
and he leapt to his knees and deployed the tripod so gracefully that he could
have been playing music.

The first grenade rocketed straight into a
creature’s face, and the massive explosion took out two more in the vicinity.
All three creatures exploded in ludicrous gibs. Dirt blew into the air and
peppered Tony’s face, but he barely felt it, too much in that quiet, focused
place that all soldiers went to in the heat of battle. He was on his feet
without even realising it and firing more grenades at wherever the creatures were
most congregated. Whenever one of them got too close, he would pull up his
rifle and let off a shot, before returning to the grenade launcher in his other
hand. The recoil should have taken him off his feet, but the weapons were a
part of him, and he tamed them like wild horses.

Creatures exploded all around him.

One of the Toyotas flipped and came down on its
roof when a grenade exploded beneath its chassis. It crushed several creatures
and caused many more to leap out of the way. Tony became a one-man army, wreaking
destruction one grenade after another. His final volley hit the area in front
of the gate and shredded a bunch of creatures that had only just passed through.
When the grenade launcher finally ran dry, at least three-dozen creatures lay
dead or mangled. Their piggish squeals filled the air.

Tony caught his breath for a moment, taking in the
heady scent of singed flesh and burning metal. He threw the empty AGS-17 down
on the ground and turned heel to race towards the border and re-join his
comrades. He’d bought them some time. Hopefully it was enough, because he had a
feeling that this was an enemy that was just getting started.